As for Leyland’s comment that the team is in chaos he was talking about the piling up injuries and it’s true. He can’t wave his hands and make hits start falling in or pitchers keeping the other team off the board. He’s having to start a bunch of backups due to injuries.

Bill-I see no reason to change the rules other than a more consistent calling of the rule book strike zone. Things are cyclical and there will be another 300 game winner.

I wanna see tonite’s lineup. let’s play ball!

Yep, Old LB hitting .293 as of today and that’s way cool

hope he hit another 2-sacker tonite!

I think it was back in 68 when they lowered the mound from 15″ to 10″ and installed the DH. And yesterday on ESPN Game Analysis I heard they are using a harder baseball and harder bats

and all of this to get more action on the field in some kind of effort to counter the perception of the general public that “baseball is boring”

any sport is boring if ya ain’t a fan and not everyone is a fan so I ain’t really sure doin’ all that to help the hitters has helped the game. it pretty much put an end to the complete game pitcher and this was discussed a lot as Gavin picked up no.300. The announcers were speculating he’d be the last pitcher to collect that honor — and this due to stacking the game for the hitters.

how do we respond to this?

I’m just a fan, so hanged if I know– guys like Leyland gotta work on this.

but the one thing that seems apparant is that if the game is stacked more for the hitters now then to some extent ya gotta score more to win. and that ain’t been happening for our Tigers. We gotta sting that baseball!

I would like to see hitting a foul on a full count score as strike 3 though — give a little back to the pitcher. what’s happening now is on a 3-2 count the pitcher has to come in each time with something over the plate — and sooner or later he’ll throw one the batter can hook up on. and it runs the pitch count up. a lot.

now why the slump

well even the best teams slump here and there. and we’re only a half game back. we can pull out of this at any moment and I’m gonna be there rooting for our Tigers when that happens

Yesterday Maggs hit one 434 ft into straightaway center field and Grandy stole No.14 so easy he made the defense look helpless. That’s our Tigers

It is a perfect storm. they can pull out of it, but IMO, the starting pitching is the key. We are down to Verlander and Bonderman (who is realy not pitching well at all) and who…? Miller? Tata? Roberston has been hideous. Rogers is hurt again–and wasn’t pitching well before his latest DL trip.

And to say they did absolutely nothing to address the bullpen just isn’t true. They dumped Mesa and added Capellan, McBride, Miner, and Durbin. They also converted one of their minor league starters who was having success to the pen and game him a try (de la cruz). The additions of Durbin and Miner coincided with the pen putting a nice run together.

Just because you didn’t like the moves, doesn’t mean that they did absolutely nothing.

I don’t know how you make the jump to what the starters vs. bullpen when I’m talking about Casey’s production vs. the rest of this order. We can carry his ‘dead weight’ as long as Guillen is relatively healthy and Curtis Granderson (who, by the way, is completely wasting away, in my opinion as a leadoff hitter — especially when Sheff’s out. I’d say drop him, but honestly, who’s there to hit leadoff? I digress, though).

The pitching as a whole is bad. Terrible. However, I don’t blame the bullpen for blowing leads that the starters don’t give them. And like billfer has said, they had a great stretch for a month, and have gone back to being crappy like they’ve been the majority of this season.

Right now, this stretch is just the perfect storm to sink the club — the bullpen being mediocre like it’s been the majority of the season. But also, the strength of this team (starting pitching) hasn’t been there either. It’s not going deep into games, not maintaining the few leads they get before handing it over to the pen, and as a result is taxing the bullpen. No bullpen, no matter how good, can be dominant or even passable when they’re consistently throwing from the mid of the 4th or 5th innings onward. Couple that with an offense (mainly Magglio) coming back to earth, or his unwillingness to drive the baseball — however you want to look at it, and every thing is going terribly at the same time.

I just think you’re dumping everything on the bullpen when the entire team is sucking. The offense is down, do you think we should’ve gone out and landed an enormous bat with what is amounting to a decent-but-not-overly-good farm system?

And the whole speculating on the mood of the team, their energy, and their thought process is just plain stupid. None of us know what their thought process or energy level or confidence in the rest of the team is and to even speculate on it just makes no sense at all to me.

Second in this losing streak the ‘pen hasn’t been the problem, its been the starters which is what I said in my previous comment

Third if you look back at what I’ve said for awhile I though we should have traded for Lidge or another reliever with plus stuff.

I’m no fan of Todd Jones unless he is our cheerleader.

Yes our ‘pen has not been great but you probably will agree with me it hasn’t been everybody.

Has Seay, Byrdak, Miner, Durbin, McBride been bad? The whole group has lost 2 games in relief (both Miner)

Or has it been Rodney Grilli and Jones? Who together have lost 12…

*Mesa, Capellan and Zumaya aren’t on the team for three different reasons and have lost 3 games combined.

If you want to look at everything, Nate has been a lot worse this year than last, and Kenny was out. How many shutouts did we have last year?

Players adjusted to our team, we were studied heavily after the WS I believe.

Hunted not the Hunter.

We are still in the thick of things and if we can pull out of this nose
dive soon we should be just fine.

The biggest thing that concerns me is how we are playing come the playoffs and if everybody can stay healthy.